DESCRIPTION: Adherence to exercise is essential for maintaining quality of life as one ages. However, only 20% of population exercises at the intensity, duration, and frequency to obtain the physiological and psychological benefits of exercise. It is known from Healthy People 2000 that both older men and women realize the benefits of exercise. Furthermore, they know how much they should exercise in order to obtain those benefits. However, the vast majority of the population remains sedentary. Increasing the percent of older adults who exercise would save a lot of personal pain and social costs. There are inherent problems with the traditional approach to exercise behavior. First, it has ignored a very important segment of the population, those who have maintained an exercise regimen for many years. It may be that a better understanding of these populations may allow for improved interventions to increase physical activity. Second, the study of exercise behavior has been largely atheoretical. Using a theoretical framework towards the study of exercise adherence may more clearly define the determinants, motivations, and cognitions of adults who maintain an exercise regimen for many years. Understanding how individuals contemplate change, the processes they undergo to attempt to change, and the processes that allow them to maintain the change will allow researchers to implement exercise programs that entice and maintain an older adults in an exercise program. The proposed study will be an investigation of exercise patterns of older adults via an application of the Trans-theoretical Model of behavioral change (Prohaska & DiClemente, 1982). The Trans-theoretical Model (TM) has been successfully applied to the cessation of smoking and addictive behaviors and has recently been considered a potential theoretical model for the cessation of a sedentary lifestyle. It is by applying a theoretical framework to the study of exercise adherence in older adults that we may begin to understand the underlying mechanisms by which adults maintain exercise and consequently, quality of life as they age. Two studies are proposed. Study 1 will recruit female adult exercisers aged 40 to 80 years in order to provide a comparison to the males already recruited in the larger, ongoing study. Past and current training habits, medical/health questions, and motivations behind adherence to exercise will be assessed via questionnaires. Study 2 will examine both male and female exercisers using the TM to more fully understand the mechanisms that underlie older adult exercise behavior.